Hi folks ! It appears that the recent Windtunnel G4s have an USB2 chip on the motherboard, which the "EHCI" side of it (the USB2 fast one) disabled by the firmware so that it behaves like a pair of USB1.1 controllers. It's possible that some other machines have this too.
To check that you have this, do an lspci. If your USB controllers are from Apple, they are USB1.1. If they are from NEC, there are great chances you have the USB2 one. I've just pushed a patch to my "devel" tree (2.4.21-rc1-ben0, rsync from rsync.penguinppc.org::benh-devel or get it via bk on bk://ppc.bkbits.net/linuxppc_2_4_benh) that re-enables the EHCI side of the controller. If you have such a machine and USB2 capable devices, please test, you must also make sure you enable the EHCI driver in the kernel config. I don't know if this driver was ever tested on big endian so it may not work properly though... Ben.